I asked a dozen colleagues what they thought might be the background of lawyer Iggie Lavinsky [1], carefully using only the words of the narrator in the story when I described this man: “… scum, a street fighter … He'll do anything to win, anything: perjury, bribery … anything”. Not surprisingly, no one thought the unscrupulous Lavinsky might be from a family of Mongolian horsemen, Australian aborigines, Viking sailors, or Bedouin shepherds or that Iggie was short for Ignatius with Catholic roots in some Eastern European country. “Why, he's supposed to be Jewish; what else could...